Celebrity Plane Crashes

Celebrity Plane Crashes

Jenni Rivera was already a star in the American Southwest, Mexico and Central America, but the banda singer was on the verge of more widespread success when she died Dec. 9, 2012, in a plane crash in Monterrey, Mexico. Rivera, 43, sold 15 million albums in the course of her career and was the mother of five and grandmother of two.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Jenni Rivera was already a star in the American Southwest, Mexico and Central America, but the banda singer was on the verge of more widespread success when she died Dec. 9, 2012, in a plane crash in Monterrey, Mexico. Rivera, 43, sold 15 million albums in the course of her career and was the mother of five and grandmother of two.

Reed Saxon/AP Photo

Celebrity Plane Crashes

Feb. 3, 1959, will forever be known as "the day the music died," after a chartered plane crashed in an Iowa cornfield, killing Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and Buddy Holly. Although Holly was only 22 when he died and had only been widely known for two years, his music continues to influence the rock genre.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Aaliyah Dana Haughton found fame early. She was 15 at the release of her debut, platinum-selling album, "Age Ain't Nothing But a Number," and the singer was only 17 when her third album, "One in a Million," was released in 1996. While on her way home from a video shoot in the Bahamas in 2001, the singer's plane crashed shortly after takeoff and left all eight people in the Cessna dead.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan was on his way back from a guest appearance with Eric Clapton when his helicopter crashed near East Troy, Wis., Aug. 27, 1990. David Bowie helped launch Vaughan's fame when he asked him to play on his 1983 album, "Let's Dance." Vaughan and his band went on to receive plenty of their own acclaim until Vaughan's premature death.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

"Country Roads, Take Me Home" might be the most memorable hit from John Denver, but the musician's career spanned the 1960s through the 1990s and included eight platinum albums, film and television appearances, and work with many environmental and humanitarian activist organizations. Denver died in 1997 when the plane that he was piloting went down in Monterey Bay, Calif.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Folk singer Jim Croce had two mainstream No. 1 hits with "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and "Time in a Bottle." He was only 30 when he died in a plane crash on his way to an Austin, Texas, concert in 1973, leaving behind a wife and young son.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Like his president father, three uncles and his aunt, John F. Kennedy Jr. lived a glamorous life in the spotlight and died tragically before his time. In JFK Jr.'s case, that end came when a plane he was piloting went down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachusetts July 16, 1999, killing Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her sister, Lauren Bessette.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Soul crooner Otis Redding would never see his most successful song hit No. 1 in 1968. At the end of 1967, as Redding's star was on the verge of becoming even brighter, his life was cut short in a plane crash just outside Madison, Wis. "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" would later top the charts despite remaining unfinished, with a missing verse filled in with whistling.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd began their rise to fame just before three members died tragically when their plane crashed in Mississippi in 1977, five shows into the biggest tour the band had yet undertaken. The remaining members went on hiatus until 1987, when a tribute tour began. In various forms, the band continued to perform into the 2000s.

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Celebrity Plane Crashes

She has been on a postage stamp, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and received a Grammy posthumously in 1995, but country music legend Patsy Cline was only 30 when she died in a 1963 Tennessee plane crash. Her biggest hits like "Crazy" and "Walkin' After Midnight" remain some of the most memorable songs, helped by her powerfully emotional voice, in the country music genre.